Wing Chun

I think that the art isn't terrible. What pisses me off is the inward looking nature of it, and the training methods.

As an example, you can become immense at chi sao, and I can pretty much guarantee that you will have a useful set of tools to use if someone grabs your hands.
But the problem is that it gets worked far too much. In particular, when you go through an attack-counter-attack-counter session. The initial attack may well have value, and I know that there are decent attacks in the system, but after that its usefulness falls apart exponentially the further you go into it.

eg only a fellow chunner is going to counter in that way, and so your response to the counter is going to be less than useful. You will have the response ingrained in you, and it might not necessarily be a bad one, but you will have still spent all your time training against a counter that will never be performed in exactly the same manner by anyone else.
That was a shitty paragraph.

What I'm trying to say is that you can learn in chi sao to respond to energies, but you're going to get drastically different energies outside the system. It may be that you'll be able to cope, or it may be that you cannot cope. The fact that you cannot be sure is what makes excessive chi sao crap, IMO.

Here's another one....

You can train a response to a pak sao that is slightly wrong in the wingchun sense. ie, someone pak saos sideways instead of inwards. So because of this, you will have it ingrained that if you do a sideways pak sao, someone will collapse their elbow over your arm and attack you.
But it doesn't work that way outside the system. You can easily get away with a sideways pak sao. In fact, it's a wingchun technique that is genuinelly useful (pak sao is sort of a parry with the palm, a slap really). But you will believe that it can only work if you do it the correct wingchun way. That is wrong. No one outside the system can really tell the difference between your "perfect" pak sao and your "slightly wrong" pak sao. So your training time has been wasted on it.

God.....I could go on.

WingChun is fine when defending against highly overcommitted attacks, but only untrained people throw these. It can defend against multiple, quality punches, and I have done this, but frankly, there are better ways.
Also, if you get a chunner on the back foot, you should be able to screw them up.

As for the groundwork....

Again, against an untrained guy I don't forsee any problems.

But the WingChun groundwork I've seen, NEVER involves a full mount! You have the chunner lying on the floor, with the attack kneeling by the side of him with no control of his body at all. So of course it's easy to use wingchun to defend yourself!

As for the inward looking nature....

I know from a reliable source that one of the biggest names in British WingChun believes WingChun should not be mixed with other martial arts. I've also been told that he believes if you train/spar with friends who do other martial arts and you get beaten then you should....stop sparring with them. Yup. Because it is meant to be used in the street only.
Now, I trust the person who told me this was telling the truth, and I respect the opinion of this WingChun sifu. However, respectfully, I cannot agree with him! If WingChun was not meant to defeat other martial arts, then why is it still around? Why do people train in it? How un-amibitious is it just to train for one encounter that may never happen! How un-ambitious is it to believe that if you are getting beaten by your martial arts friends it's because the system just isn't designed for it!

Coupled with this, the "word" from Hong Kong is that the old masters want to take the fighting out of wingchun and turn it into more of a healthy passtime thing like tai chi.
And since in the UK, so many people love teaching in the "traditional" way and to be recognised by and certified with Hong Kong is such a great thing, I don't see there being any resistance to this in Britain.

I must admit, I find the WingChun forms "clever" in that they do contain a lot of stuff in a pretty concise form. But many practitioners believe that these forms are somewhat the be all and end all of martial knowledge. And it's not discouraged. Need an answer to a problem? Just look in a form! If it's not there, KEEP ON LOOKING DAMMIT! If it's still not there, either modify the form, or desperately try to twist and distort some movement so it looks like it might be the answer.
Amazing that apparently the first form contains a rear naked choke according to some people. I kid you not. The movement they are speaking of is definitely NOT a choke of any kind.
For those of you who have seen the form, it's the double lan sao. :sign12: :sign12:

This is a horrible attitude in my mind. Very outdated. And since there's only 3 empty hand forms, it does lead to some highly concerning inward looking navel gazing and katabation.

As for positives, WingChun has helped me in the clinch. And in stand up, I find my hands are quick, and I still have use for some of the parries. But the "follow-ups" that are taught in WingChun, for me at least, are useless on a trained resisting opponent.
We won't even mention groundwork. Useless, and frankly dangerous.

Oh, and anti-grappling. I did Wing Tsun for a while. Aside from being shite, the anti grappling was pure comedy.
I heartily recommend watching Victor Gutierrez's Anti_Vale Tudo, Anti Grapppling etc etc tape.

Eh, anyway. I list WingChun in my style because I did it for quite a while, and it's still "in me". But as a whole, I find the community, utterly, utterly depressing and so MMA is my main thrust these days.
Perhaps someone will really be able to bring WingChun into the 21st century, but that person it not me I'm afraid. My heart isn't in it anymore.

I guess you have a point there. Training method is..er..a fucking huge part of any art. Basically: Too. Much. Chi Sao.
That sums up my problem with training in wingchun.
I suspect that WingChun could be made decent if this were rectified. But like I said, I'm not going to be the one to do this. :D

Oh, damn, I feel so sorry for beginners in it.

When they first get taught poon sao (the rolling of chi sao), it's just so anal. You could literally spend days perfecting the positions and energies of your roll. What's the damn point? :qright7:

I just noticed you spent a lot of time with Moy Yat, so you know a hell of a lot more about WingChun than I do. What's your feelings on chi sao?

I did wingchun for a while. I think of chi sao as a kind of drill which has been mistaken for the end goal by lots of WingChun places.

It would be like somebody training in grappling, but not having any grappling bouts in class, just doing partnered position drills (or whatever the correct term is) all the time, in obsessive detail.

Even if you made the drill 'competitive' and allow 'hard contact', as many WC schools have (I think that might even be traditional) you'd probably end up doing weird **** just to 'win' the drill that was of little or no use in the freer context of 'grappling', and end up adding or emphasising this weird **** as 'core techniques'. And I think that's what's happened to WingChun. At least the kind I saw.